Tuesday, 5 June 2007

Touts

The results for all the entrance exams have been declared and accompanying that all the hype about which coaching centre prepared the winning horses .

Its just funny to note that invariably all the coaching centres claim that the toppers were their 'students' . It is a known fact that these schools and coaching centres contact high performers in 10th class and enroll them free of cost .

The contribution of these coaching centres towards the success of the toppers is minimal and these student would have come out with flying colors even without their help...the performance track of these students speaks volumes.So , whatever the coaching centres claims should be taken with a generous helping of salt .

hmm..wonder when only the prob is going to be solved :(anyways...u seem very preoccupied and not urself...looks like they are xxxl nails that u r pulling.wish u come out of it soon and take up ur VlyBRing work :) and ofcourse all other interests :)take care , Partner...

i could never understand why marks are so important.... but i can say... that there r lots of people who score high marks in school but fare pathetically in life...//It simply proves that EQ is more important than IQ.

another problem with our education system is that marks make the person individualistic, and selfish... what u need in life is teamwork. //While I feel personal growth , quest for knowledge and self development are important....sharing and giving in shd also be cultivated.This is one of the reasons I feel Jiddu Krishnamurthy's ideas on education is ideal.

JK's teachings is a great ocean..I am just giving his views on education here.but first see what he says about talking of his teachings :)

"If you want to understand the teachings, it is advisable to go to their source, not to an interpreter or someone claiming to be an authority on the teachings. …From the 1920s I (Krishnamurti) have been saying that there should be no interpreters of the teachings for they distort the teachings and it becomes a means of exploitation …each person should observe directly his or her own activities, not according to any theory or authority."

:)) so I am including a few of his quotes...

"A school is a place where one learns about the totality, the wholeness of life. Academic excellence is absolutely necessary, but a school includes much more than that. It is a place where both the teacher and the student explore, not only the outer world, the world of knowledge, but also their own thinking, their own behavior. "

- J Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti repeatedly stated the intentions of the education centres he founded in very unequivocal terms, and in very religious ones.

"... children... must be educated rightly... educated so that they become religious human beings. "

Surely they must be centres of learning a way of life which is not based on pleasure, on self-centered activities, but on the understanding of correct action, the depth and beauty of relationship, and the sacredness of a religious life.

The educational centres Krishnamurti founded are invariably in parks or countryside. This was not just because he felt that nature was pleasing, but because he felt that a relationship with nature had important implications for living sanely and to a relationship with the sacred.

That healing [of the mind] gradually takes place if you are with nature, with that orange on the tree, and the blade of grass that pushes through the cement, and the hills covered, hidden, by the clouds.

"This is not sentiment or romantic imagination but a reality of a relationship with everything that lives and moves on the earth."

He often spoke to the students of the importance of a quiet mind or silence so that they could observe their thoughts.

"You see meditation means to have a very quiet, still mind, not a chattering mind; to have a really quiet body, quiet mind so that your mind becomes religious. "

"The mind of a religious man is very quiet, sane, rational, logical - and one needs such a mind... "

The essence of his views on the student , teacher relationship goes like this...

Everyone, staff and students, had something religious about their natures just by virtue of being human, but they had something more than that by virtue of their being in education. Krishnamurti didn’t speak of them as religious figures (such as priests or accolades) but one thing that distinguishes participants in education from participants in some other social organizations (i.e. police officers, nurses, bankers, etc.) is that people in education must have religiousness central to their overall intention and central to the nature of the life they lived on a daily basis. As this is equally necessary to both staff and students, there can be no real hierarchy between them. There are, of course, differences between staff and students in their responsibilities and experience; but in all that is most important in education the staff and students are really in the same boat. Staff members may know more about academic subjects, or gardening, or administration and therefore have a certain authority in those areas, but these are not the central concerns of education. In the central concerns of education, which is to do with inner liberation, both the students and the teachers are learners and therefore equal, and this is untouched by functional authority.

and this takes the cake...

"Right education is to help you to find out for yourself what you really, with all your heart, love to do. It does not matter what it is, whether it is to cook, or to be a gardener, but is something in which you have put your mind, your heart. "

Krishnamurti as a young seventeen year old wrote,

"If the unity of life and the oneness of its purpose could be clearly taught to the young in schools, how much brighter would be our hopes for the future! "

Forty one years later he wrote,

"If one becomes aware that there can be peace and harmony for man only through right education, then one will naturally give one's whole life and interest to it. "

He followed his preachings and did just that.

about EQ..I have read a few parts of a book on it by Daniel Goleman..I understand EQ as the ability of a person to be comfortable with oneself and others..the art of getting along with people and be emotionally stable.

more than your post (which is indeed a good observation as labeled) I admired your comments on JK. Am also one among the millions, who got inspired by JK. Some of his thoughts on certain aspects of life looses its strength with newly emerging knowledge on consciousness. But most of his thoughts have deep insight and free from most of the conditionings.

I guess you might enjoy reading the book, On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. Let me know if you are interested in that book.

Hello Thiru.. I am so happy u mentioned about the comment. I was thinking of making it a post as it took me considerable time to compose it. Thiru , I like JK's ideas on certain aspects but as u rightly put it many others are not practical today. His teachings on education is so admirable and if its followed without any kostens...we can weed out the flaws in our system.//http://srisviews.blogspot.com/2007/02/while-everyone-is-talking-about-pros.html..a post on JK's dream project.//did u read this ?

thanks for pointing me to the post A Modern Gurukulam It is an excellent and informative post. I would like to know the formalities, if one wish to visit that school and get to know whats happening there (and that 'one' is me only!) I got stimulated to write posts on some of JKs thoughts and its validity in modern world, (not in immediate future but soon when I can find time and mood)

I am so impressed with the post, that I can't help but add a link of that post in my blog under the title - An Ideal educational system for India.

//On Intelligence by Jeff Hawkins. Let me know if you are interested in that book//I read the excerpts ...found it interesting.

I would like to know the formalities, if one wish to visit that school //Thiru, u need to talk to the office and ask if the guest house is available . U need to make the booking earlyas its first come first served...and parents get first preference.If u know any child studying there , or a staff there u can go forthe visit.but if u dont want to stay there but only want a day visit...u go to Madanapalle and drive to Rishi Valley and get permission from the office and see around.Hey Thiru...find out the time when a singer or dancer isvisiting the place and try to go at that time...u get the realessence of the place.But first call up the school before u go...i will get u the number later (this system is very slow :( )

I got stimulated to write posts on some of JKs thoughts and its validity in modern //looking forward to it.thiru...I used to read a blog which has JK's style of writing..willgive u the URL along with RV tel number.

that I can't help but add a link of that post in my blog //glad u like it :)